Abstract

In his study of the conversion of Westerners to Islam, a Turkish sociologist revealed in 1996 that it happened that a significant proportion of the converts had adopted that religion under the influence of Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. Now Sufism, located at the meeting-point of the written and oral traditions of Islam, offers an original commentary on the Quran and a spiritual practice based on psychosomatic exercises close to yoga. Interest in Sufism among Westerners was revealed at the end of the nineteenth century and became considerable from the 1930s onwards, resulting in the foundation in Europe of Sufi groups directed by converts who very quickly became shaykhs (shaikh). These first groups, to which new ones were added, are still active today, although somewhat bruised by numerous divisions. The reasons for conversion to Sufism among Europeans, for the most part from intellectual milieux, rest on concerns of a spiritual dimension linked to the climate of religious crisis which the modern West has experienced since the end of the nineteenth century. To which should be added in recent decades the fashionable exoticism fostered by the development of means of transport and communication which have brought East and West closer.